Page 115 of Forbidden Flame

Mom reluctantly stepped back. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to clean or cook for us. We just came to talk.” We stood facing each other in the foyer.

“Oh?” Mom asked, looking to Charlotte for guidance, but she just smiled. “Come into the living room then.”

Dad had the news on TV and was sitting in the recliner, a beer in his hand.

“Terry, the kids are here.”

Dad turned in his chair. “What are you doing here?”

“We came to talk.” I sat on the couch.

“Well, this is unusual.” He ran a hand through his unkept hair. His hands were stained from his work as a mechanic.

“We won’t stay long.”

Charlotte sat next to me, and Mom sat in an overstuffed chair across from us.

“I just wanted to say that your drinking when we were growing up affected us. You might have thought you were hiding it, or you were functioning because you could go to work, but you weren’t there as a father, like you should have been.”

Dad shook his head. “Is this where you blame your parents for all your problems?”

“I think it’s important that you hear what Cole has to say, Dad,” Charlotte added.

He waved her off and turned to the TV. “If you’re just here to bash me, you can go back where you came from.”

“Mom, you pretended like everything was okay when it wasn’t. You enabled him to continue like this. He missed our games, our award ceremonies. He might have been physically present, but he was mentally somewhere else.” I took a deep breath, some weight lifting off my chest as I said, “I just came to tell you that I forgive you for not being the parents you should have been.”

I stood, ready to leave. I didn’t know what I was hoping to accomplish, but this seemed like a dead end. “I’m in love with a woman and her child. I’m hoping to plan a future with her. If you want to be included in our lives, you need to be sober. Go to meetings, get in a program. Do whatever you have to do.”

When Dad didn’t answer, I turned my back on him and headed toward the door. Mom rushed after us. “You know he won’t go.”

“We’ve said what we came to say.” I set the boundary, and I had no intention of removing it. “If you want a part in our lives going forward, you’ll make some changes. Because I won’t subject myself to this anymore.” I gestured around the messy house, where liquor was probably stuffed in cabinets. It wasn’t a safe situation for kids or my mental health.

We walked out then, Charlotte’s hand curled around my bicep. “That was kind of amazing.”

I looked down at her. “I didn’t mean to speak for you.”

“You’re the one who has a family to protect.”

It felt good to hear her refer to Daphne and Izzy as my family. “Your peace is just as important. Never forget that.”

Charlotte nodded sadly but didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what was going on with her, but I didn’t have the capacity to deal with it now. “You want to look at the house I’m thinking of buying?”

She brightened as we got into my truck. “I’d love to.”

I was moving forward with my life. I would heal the wounds of my past. That’s what Daphne and Izzy deserved. My whole self. I was no longer the scared little boy looking for an escape. I was breaking generational patterns by cutting my parents loose and being a better father than mine had been.

Chapter 25

Daphne

After I picked myself off the floor of Cole’s hotel room and washed my face in the bathroom that still smelled like him, I went outside to join my family. I had to be strong in front of Izzy. If she asked where Cole was, I’d say he had to go home for work, and he was sorry he didn’t have time to say goodbye.

I didn’t want to lie for him, but I refused to ruin her vacation. This wasn’t about her. This was about Cole and his issues with his family. He needed to deal with that before he could have a healthy relationship with anyone, much less my daughter.

Every day that went by when I didn’t hear from him, the fissure in my heart grew larger.

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